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Blog Therapy

I recognize the prior post as an excellent example of Blog Therapy. When I encounter psychological difficulty, I write a blog post. The blog is my Linus blanket.

I use the blog as a way to understand my changed world. It allows me to explore events, to explain them, anchor them, and place them within a cognitive framework that encompasses all the injury after effects. The blog is less a narrative and more a set of minor diagnostic routines applied each time my world bends out of shape, or when I fail to conform.

Blog Therapy – Telling Time

The blog delivers another set of benefits. It helps me tell time. I am constantly amazed to search the blog for an event that happened yesterday, or within the last week, and find that the documented occurrence of the event was several months ago. Ever since the injury, my relationship with time has been off in some way.

This disconnect with time was driven home during the period after the window installation. In this post on Dormant Life, I describe my encounter with aspects of myself that had been totally abandoned subsequent to the accident. It still stuns me to contemplate this fact. Prior to the accident I had interests and appetites. After the accident the objects remained, hidden away in plain sight. It was my appetites and interests that disappeared. I had become a new man and was unaware of this fact. How bizarre are the workings of the mind!

Blog Therapy – Marginal Improvement

I grab on to any evidence of even marginal improvement. For example, I am now more fluid when it comes to operating an image editor. Muscle memory of the controls has returned. This is an outcome of the ongoing blog demand for imagery. I am able to function albeit within a limited sphere, or range of activity. It is pleasurable to be able to function in this way. This gives rise to a sense of optimism and hope. That after all the effort, the assistance of Dr D, and Dr H, the countless tuna fish sandwiches, the forest of avocados, the tons of sardines, and the ten mile daily walks, that I now, finally, demonstrate some improvement.

My response is one that is almost ecstatic in nature. I can do it!! I am doing it!! A full recovery is possible!! A reflective pause follows. This single marginal improvement has required 5 years of effort. At this rate of improvement, I should be fully recovered in 2036 when I am 85 years old, still pumping out 10 miles a day.

Reality floods in, dampens any optimism, and destroys the hope. I once more begin to drown in despair. Then I fight to see the forest that hides behind the trees.